So I just spend the best part of half an hour trying to get Paul's new MP3 player to work.  He got it from Argos on Monday for about twenty quid because he wanted one with more capacity, and it was 1GB.

So on Monday afternoon he tried to install it, with no success.  Well, half success, at least, in that the PC was detecting the new hardware, etc, etc, but it wasn't appearing in My Computer in the slightest as actually existing as a drive.  And then when he tried to stop it, the bloody thing took nearly 15 minutes so he gave up and pulled the plug instead, and rebooted, after which it wouldn't work at all...

Since I have infinitely more patience with my computer than Paul does I said I'd have a go with it today.  Same problem - it detects it just fine, but then it doesn't appear in My Computer.  Which means, obviously, that's it's essentially useless.  I tried putting in the driver CD and trying to install the drivers that way to see if it would help, but that just resulted in my PC freezing up entirely.

After a reboot, I restored the PC settings to Saturday, before it even knew about the player, and tried again.  Immediate recognition of "USB Mass Storage Device" and then more recognition 10 minutes later of "ARGOS".  Well, hurrah for that.  Still no sign of it as a drive, though.

I tried to stop it three times without success and eventually just unplugged it.  As there's no data on there there's nothing it can lose.

So, that's going back to the shop.  Possibly he should also get a player by another company which actually works.  Preferably with instructions that aren't in Engrish.

*sigh*

So, word to the wise, don't get an MP3 player from Acoustic Solutions.  Their name does not do what it says on the tin.

I suppose I should do something productive.  My stomach ache has gone, but now I have a headache.  I might try and fix the towel rail to the bathroom door, I think... after lunch.

I think that worked.  I just remembered that I needed to change the settings for Outlook Express and my website emails, and it turned out to be easier to start from scratch.

Good things:  both my hosting people and Virgin are helpful people. And unlike AOL, who claim not to work with Outlook Express, Virgin actually tell you what details to put where so you're not fumbling around trying to make it work.

Nice people.  Evil AOL.

In the meantime, to ensure it works (and so I can put people on my SpamFighter whitelist) can people please send a short email to feedback at teylaminh dot com?  Ta.  Now I just need to go through the pages and find all reference to the old email address and change it...

I should probably mention, it's not going to be my primary email address.  That will still be the Yahoo! one.  Unfortunately they make you pay to synchronise it with Outlook otherwise I'd sync them all... ;)

So, yes.  At least I'm only at work for four days this week.  And four days next week.  And three the week after that.  Quite a relief.  Yay for Easter.

Today I had an amendment to do that wasn't mine, but as usual I did it because it was quicker that way.  I've pasted some bits of it (with personal details omitted, where applicable) under the cut just to demonstrate some of the horrible grammar in the thing.  I mean, it might just be me, but you'd think that the rest of the WPOs would have some sense of English, let alone common sense.  Or maybe I'm the only one who pays attention to what I'm typing...

( OW. )

Yeah.  And they're all slow. :P

I do believe that's everything I was going to say.  I think I'll investigate the Doc/Seven fic on FFN for a bit, as a few seem to have come in recently...

Well, some internet is better than no internet, but the connection seems awfully temperamental.  Yesterday morning it worked fine, but then in the afternoon we had to reboot the router before it would acknowledge the internet connection.  This morning it works (after a ten minute wait)  but is deathly slow.  Like, dial-up slow.  Semagic loads just fine, but it hasn't managed to load Livejournal properly and isn't acknowledging Yahoo in the slightest...  *kicks internet*

I do believe my slow PC is partially to blame for this, but it's still bloody annoying...  Hopefully if I ever upgrade it might be better, but until then we'll just have to deal with it... meh.

Anyway, yesterday was quite nice.  Firstly we did our usual trick of going out shopping for five items and spending over £40 on general shopping.  Which is probably why I never have any money left.

Got back, had some lunch, and attempted to use the internet, only to fail and instead finish Myst.  Then I sulked for a bit and watched the pilot of Nip/Tuck on the Virgin Choice channel (I think that's what it's called), which has archived the first couple of episodes of various serieses on there.  As much as I prefer Sky to cable, the Teleport Replay and Teleport Movies are a nice bonus...

Then in the evening we headed off to the abode of herringprincess and wrysprygoat for dinner.  Drew cooked us a very nice veggie lasagne, and in the evening we played Scrabble and made things out of play-doh.  There's something quite therapeutic about play-doh, and the smell reminds me of childhood.

Which was quite strange, actually, since that morning I'd bought some tinned turkey breast from Sainsbury's to use for sandwiches, which was another vestige of my childhood was nostalgia in smell and taste form.

Anyway, assuming this thing posts, I might get to check my friends list at some point this bloody afternoon.

I do like time off work, you know. It takes me about two days to kick myself into productivity, but once I do, I actually manage to achieve stuff.

I am actually fairly certain that nobody is really that interested in my day to day life, but I’m of the opinion that I will read back on this journal in a few months of years (as I frequently do) and remember things better for writing them down at the time.

( Wednesday )

( Thursday )

( Friday )

Over the weekend, we did very little. I finished the curtains on Saturday – the white floor-length voile in the bedroom looks SO much better than the half-window net that was there before, and the black voile in the living room takes the edge off the harsh sunlight first thing in the morning, and should look lovely in summer. I also created a tie-back for the yellow voile in the hallway using the purple ribbon that was on my Lush giftset, and Paul helped me hang blue voile across the hallway so that now the lower bit of the landing looks like an actual room. Very nice. Pictures coming, etc, etc…

More Life on Mars. Paul went out with Alex at about 7.30 and I sat down to watch the premiere of Brokeback Mountain at 9.00, though only managed to watch the first hour of it before Paul came back and I turned it off, which was the easier option than trying to watch it over his drunkenness. What I saw was good, at least.

Sunday was also uneventful but for a couple of games of Scrabble. I reinstalled Myst on my PC and started to play it again (although as it’s designed for Windows 95 at the latest and requires 256 colours, it has a tendency to either crash or freeze and then return with the colours all wrong.)

And that is everything.

There is nothing to do at work today. ( So I start rambling about annual leave. )

So, yeah. As I already stated, I couldn’t be bothered to mess with the network on Thursday, so I’ve come back to it this morning. Ben has suggested buying a double-protected anti-interference cable to try, but before that eventuality, we have three immediate ports of call.

1. Tortuga. Ben thinks there might be some electronic interference causing the cable to drop packets. The only thing even remotely nearby, other than the PC itself, of course, is our infrared wireless doorbell. So firstly I’m going to move that away from the PC and into the living room, where hopefully it won’t interfere with anything else.

2. See if our connection will work with Lisa’s cable unplugged. If this is the case, then it is either a router problem or a Telewest / Virgin Media problem.

3. Phone Telewest, to make sure they are providing us with what they said they were. We specifically had the higher broadband speed for the purposes of networking, so it’s best to double-check it will actually support one…

And failing that, it’s the router being an arse.

I’m not prepared to drag my PC downstairs and try all combinations of short cables to check it if works, because it’s a hassle I can’t be doing with. However I am at least fairly confident that we will overcome this annoyance and finally Have The Internet.

I shall now sign off this ridiculously long thing and post it.

To be honest, I've spent most of the weekend feeling quite unwell due to the cold I managed to catch during my last week at work. It wasn't bad enough to warrant time off, which is probably just as well, because the other WPO in this team has also been off sick. I think the Council has its own special kind of lurgy...

On Saturday I was meant to take Paul out for the day (despite us both being broke and me trying to save money) but we called a halt to the proceedings late in the afternoon because my head hurt and I had a sore throat... But anyway, we firstly went to see the Superduperspective exhibition of 3D 'moving paintings at the Waterhall Gallery. Very entertaining and very clever. It's been extended to February 18 and it's well worth a look if you want half an hour or so of free entertainment and optical illusions are your kind of thing...

Then we wandered to the Ikon Gallery to see what pretentiousness they were exhibiting, but they were between installations so it was closed...

After that we went down Broad Street and stopped for drinks in the Figure of Eight, where we ran into flatlin2010 and Denise, and shortly thereafter falling_softly, who were on their way to see Smokin' Aces and quickly discovered the shitness that is Birmingham cinema times. Lloyd broke the ItBox and then it was fixed and we wasted some money in that, before they wandered off to the cinema and we headed towards Riley's.

We got as far as the Wetherspoon's by the library and gave up because I was in pain. Paul reminded me umpteen times that I owed him a night out and I complained that I never had any money. In the end we went to Tesco to get some food and something for dinner.

We went to bed at about 9.00 and watched the DVD of The Producers in bed (the new, musical version). ( Some thoughts, possibly spoilery )

On Sunday, joetimewaster was coming round with miss_scooter to get our internet all networked up. I had booked Monday off specifically for the purpose of spending the day surfing the internet, which was a very stupid thing to do as it just tempted fate... Everything worked except for the 15m of cabling between the router and my computer, annoyingly - we even tried the same cabling between the router and Lisa's PC downstairs (where the modem is) and it still didn't work.

Buggeration.

So I spent most of Monday going to Selly Oak on the bus to get to PC World to see if I could get more cable there. Where it cost £35.00 and I didn't bother, instead asking Paul to email Ben and get him to get us more cable online, where it costs about a tenth of the price. PC World are rip-off merchants.

So we still don't have the internet. I wasn't feeling particularly well yesterday and the price of cable in PC World annoyed me... I had to go into Kings Heath to buy Paul some more work shoes so I thought I'd make the best use of the time and tried to buy a Valentine's card. Except I'd managed to time it so that all of the Camp Hill girls (but no boys...?) left school at the same time, and instantly filled up the card shops trying to get cards for their boyfriends. I gave up trying to find a card after the fifth rude person pushed past me without an 'excuse me', and because all the cards were either annoying, cheesy or just plain ugly. I am very particular when it comes to card-buying, but it does make the task very irritating.

Anyway, the other cable has been ordered and will hopefully work this time, and should be delivered by the end of the week..

Oh, and no, we don't want wireless, so don't suggest it. :P

I ended up having an on/off nap on Monday afternoon between 4.00 and 6.00 and then we went to Wetherspoons because I was in no fit state to cook.

I'm supposed to be going to choir tonight, but since I haven't had an unbroken night's sleep since Friday because of my cough (and because of the noisy bastards next door partying until 6.00am) I'm exhausted, and in no fit state to sing, either.

I've booked three days off from 14 - 16 February, and hopefully by then the internet will work.

Nothing's ever simple, is it? *sigh*

Anyway, as soon as I do have the internet, I will be posting some photographs from London that date back to October, and some photographs of the flat for those that haven't seen it yet. There would have been before/after photographs, but my camera wasn't uncovered until most of it was sorted. Of course, there will be photos assuming I can get the camera to work long enough - the battery cover broke off at London Zoo (it had an argument with the floor) and, of course, it's spring loaded. I need a new camera. :(

I am still alive.

All of the Solicitors and Legal Assistants are at an away day today so we ran out of work in our room at about 10.00 and started hijacking it from the other two teams (who always seem to have twice as much.) I am learning to slow my typing speed down so as not to run out of work. I'm far too used to enormous documents - and probably that three-week backlog after I was ill didn't help, either.

My computer is no longer buried and Ben is (hopefully) coming over on Sunday to look at it and advise on networking, so with any luck I will have internet access by Christmas. (On that note, Telewest are being bastards, but never mind that.) The bedroom looks more presentable now and this weekend we're going to attempt to rearrange the living room.

My mum got us our chairs from Ikea (should get those on Saturday) and is going to get our Christmas tree from Homebase. I'm determined to have the place at least vaguely presentable by Christmas...

The new Dyson is bloody wonderful. :)

I am a member of the City of Birmingham Choir and did my first concert on Saturday, a performance of Berlioz's Te Deum. There is a Christmas carol concert on Sunday 17 December at 2.30pm if anyone's interested, or we'll be carol singing in the Bull Ring on 6 December, 1.30 to 3.30. Hurrah, carols!

Also, here's two annoying things:

1) My website appears to have become deceased, as does the host site (www.34sp.com). I'm not sure if the latter is due to annoying work internet access, so if anyone could check that for me I would be very grateful. I also can't get into my www.mail.com account to even check if they emailed/advised me of anything. It's not such a problem for the site itself as all the content is on my hard drive, but it's all the pictures I had saved on there which bothers me, as I'll need time to go back through old LJ entries trying to find dead links so I can recreate the file systems and just argh.

2) Sainsbury's never have any bread when I want to buy any. We normally get Warburton's white because it's the nicest non-fresh bread and we both like it. Except Sainsbury's didn't have any, so I had to get Hovis square white instead... which used to be really nice, except now they've changed the recipe and put "wholemeal goodness" in it. Here's the thing: if I want brown bread, I'll buy brown bread. I want white bread, ergo I do not want "wholemeal goodness" in there. The "best of both" stuff mings. I'm eating healthily enough; stop shoving it down my throat.

That is all.

I just thought I'd resurface as it's quiet, since Eni texted me to make sure I was still alive...

I haven't checked my friends list in well over two months, so if anything deathly interesting has happened, feel free to email me or leave links in comments. Ta.

Newsflash: Children's Services finally drags it's arse out of the Dark Ages by installing shiny new flatscreen monitors in the Area Offices.

About damn time, too.

They'll be coming on Thursday. I was actually going to request one for the good of my vision/sanity (I hate 800x600) but that would've taken months. Now I don't have to. Yay. :)

Now they just need to upgrade the computers and it'll be fine...